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Dynamite Kid
Dynamite Kid made his WWF television debut on August 29, 1984, where he and Bret Hart defeated Iron Mike Sharpe and Troy Alexander in a match eventually shown on September 15, 1984 on the Maple Leaf Garden broadcast. Billington would end up teaming with Davey Boy Smith as the British Bulldogs, while Bret would team with Jim Neidhart as The Hart Foundation, and it led to matches between the two teams that usually ended in No-Contests. On April 7, 1986, accompanied by Captain Lou Albano and Ozzy Osbourne, they won the WWF Tag Team Titles from Greg Valentine and Brutus Beefcake at WrestleMania II. Dynamite Kid was injured in December 1986 in a tag match in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada against Don Muraco and Bob Orton and several wrestlers including Roddy Piper, Junkyard Dog and Billy Jack Haynes would substitute for him when tag title defenses were made. While recovering in the hospital from back surgery, Billington would later recount that Bret Hart showed up and stated that Vince McMahon had sent him to get Dynamite's tag belt; Billington refused. Shortly after checking himself out of the hospital (against doctors' orders), Billington met with McMahon, who requested that the Bulldogs drop the tag titles to the team of Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik; Billington refused, saying that he would only drop the belts to The Hart Foundation. McMahon acquiesced and at a TV taping on January 26, 1987, The British Bulldogs wrestled a match to drop the titles to The Hart Foundation; the match would air on the February 7 edition of WWF Superstars of Wrestling. The match itself was an odd sight, as Dynamite could barely walk due to back surgery, and thus needed to be carried to the ring piggyback by Davey Boy Smith; Dynamite was knocked out (in storyline terms) by Jimmy Hart's megaphone early in the match, therefore avoiding his having to wrestle in the match. From that point forward, the Bulldogs would not be a top-tier team anymore, and while they would not become straight jobbers, they would mostly wrestle to double disqualifications, double countouts, or time limit draws against the top teams in the WWF. After getting into a real life backstage fight with Jacques Rougeau, the Bulldogs wrestled their last WWF match at the 1988 Survivor Series. Throughout his time in the WWF, Dynamite Kid made several enemies, including Brutus Beefcake (who had unwittingly insulted a friend of Billington's) and Jacques Rougeau (who had blamed the Bulldogs for a prank they didn't commit), but was highly respected by many for his toughness and legitimate shooting ability in and out of the ring. For example, after getting assaulted by Rougeau and taking 3 shots in the face from brass knuckles (including one in the mouth that knocked out 4 of his teeth), Billington never went down; no less than Vince McMahon himself marveled at the fact that Billington took the shots and stayed on his feet. An example of his stiffness in the ring is when he and Smith wrestled the team of Les Thornton and a young Mick Foley. By Foley's account, Billington manhandled him so badly in the ring that he couldn't eat solid food for a time, and tore a ligament in Foley's jaw with his trademark Hook Clothesline. Outside of the ring, WWF-champion Randy Savage once specifically asked for him to watch his back when he went drinking in a hotel bar frequented by NWA wrestlers, including Ric Flair.